The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than on biographical questions about the composer himself, the handbook represents a cross-disciplinary introduction to comprehending Sondheim in musicological, theatrical, and socio-cultural terms.
This collection of never-before published essays addresses issues of artistic method and musico-dramaturgical form, while at the same time offering close readings of individual shows from a variety of analytical perspectives. The handbook is arranged into six broad sections: issues of intertextuality and authorship; Sondheim's pioneering work in developing the non-linear form of the concept musical; the production history of Sondheim's work; his writing for film and television; his exploitation and deployment of a wide range of musical genres; and how interpretation through key critical lenses (including sociology, history, and feminist and queer theory) establishes his position in a broader cultural context.
Introduction ; Intertexuality and authorship: toward non-linear forms ; Chapter 1. Sondheim's genius by Stephen Banfield ; Chapter 2. Sondheim and postmodernism by Robert McLaughlin ; Chapter 3. "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught": Oscar Hammerstein's influence on Sondheim by Dominic Symonds ; Chapter 4. "Old situations, new complications": tradition and experiment in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Robert Gordon ; Chapter 5. Anyone Can Whistle as experimental theatre by David Savran ; The art of making art ; Chapter 6. The Prince-Sondheim legacy by Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen ; Chapter 7. "Growing pains": revising Merrily We Roll Along by Andrew Buchman ; Chapter 8. "Give Us More to See": the visual world of Stephen Sondheim's musicals by Bud Coleman ; Chapter 9. Orchestrators in their own words: the sound of Sondheim in the 21st century by Nathan Matthews ; Chapter 10. "Nothing More than Just a Game": the American Dream goes bust in Road Show by Garret Eisler ; Sondheim in performance ; Chapter 11. "It Takes Two": the doubling of actors and roles in Sunday in the Park with George by Olaf Jubin ; Chapter 12. "Something Just Broke": Assassins after the Iraq War - a production and its reception by Joanne Gordon ; Chapter 13. Sondheim on the London stage by Matt Wolf ; Chapter 14. "And One for Mahler": an opera director's reflections on Sondheim in the subsidized theatre by Keith Warner ; Sondheim across the media ; Chapter 15. Evening Primrose: Sondheim and Goldman's television musical by Robynn J. Stilwell ; Chapter 16. From screen to stage: A Little Night Music and Passion by Geoffrey Block ; Chapter 17. More Sondheim: original music for movies by Roger Hickman ; Chapter 18. Attending the tale of Sweeney Todd: the stage musical and Tim Burton's film version by David Thomson ; Sondheim across genres ; Chapter 19. A Little Night Music: the cynical operetta by Joseph Swain ; Chapter 20. into song: Sondheim tackles Greek Frogs by Marianne McDonald ; Chapter 21. Sweeney Todd: From melodrama to musical tragedy by Millie Taylor ; Chapter 22. "Careful the Spell You Cast": Into the Woods and the uses of disenchantment by Ben Francis ; Sondheim, identity and society ; Chapter 23. Keeping company with Sondheim's women by Stacy Ellen Wolf ; Chapter 24. Follies: musical pastiche and cultural archaeology by Robert Lawson-Peebles ; Chapter 25. Narratives of progress and tragedy in Pacific Overtures by Paul Filmer ; Chapter 26. Queer Sondheim by Scott F. Stoddart ; Chapter 27. Sondheim's America; America's Sondheim by Raymond Knapp ; Bibliography ; Index
